The Rainy Day Railroad War Part 9

"That's the way it was told to me by Joshua Ward himself, Mr. Parker,"

concluded the postmaster. "He had to get out. He didn't have any money to fight in law. He didn't want to stir up the thing on poor Cynthy's account. And he was ashamed to have the whole world know how mean a man he had for a brother."

"What has become of this Joshua?" asked the young man, his heart hot with new and fresh bitterness against this unspeakable tyrant of the timber country.

"Josh did what so many other heart-broken men have done. He went into the woods, on an island in Little Moxie, built a cabin, has his pension to live on, and has become one of those queer old chaps such as you will find scattered all the way from Holeb to New Brunswick. There's old Young at Gulf Hagas, and the Mediator at Boarstone, and a lot like them.

They call Joshua the 'cat hermit of Moxie.'

"They say he's got cats round his place by the hundred. Spends all his time in hunting meat and catching fish for 'em. Well, most everybody is cranky about some notion or others, whether it's in the city or in the woods, and I reckon that Josh has a right to keep cats if he wants to.

No one ever sees him out in civilization now. Cynthy's in the asylum.

Most people think it's just the trouble of the thing preying on her mind. And then again, I guess that Gid wasn't ever any too good to her.

Hard case, ain't it, Mr. Parker?" The postmaster's voice trembled.

"It's as sad a story--as anger-stirring a story as I ever listened to, Mr. Dodge," replied the young man, pa.s.sionately. "I cannot understand how a scoundrel of that style should have been allowed to stamp roughshod over people without a champion arising in some quarter. It is small wonder that he has come to think that he can run the universe. He needs a lesson."

"There's no doubt about his needin' the lesson," replied the postmaster.

"But for years half the wages that are paid out in this section have come through the hands of Gideon Ward. Laboring men with families to support and the traders have to stand in with him or be side-tracked. I don't know as Gid ever did a real up-and-down crime, any more than what I've been telling you--and some men in the world would be mean enough to gloss all that over, saying that it's only right to look out for number one first of all. But I tell ye honestly, Mr. Parker, Gid would have to do something pretty desperate and open to have the prosecuting officers of this county take it up against him. Now you can understand the width of the swath he cuts in these parts. Where would the witnesses come from? He owns his men, body and soul."

Parker's forehead wrinkled doubtfully.

"What do you think will be his next move in regard to me?"

"I can't make a guess, but you need smellers as long as a bobcat's and as many eyes as a spider." With this cheering opinion expressed, the postmaster went away.

There was no more work for Parker on his plans that night.

The grim pathos of the story that he had heard haunted him. This pitiful tragedy in real life stirred his youthful and impressionable sensibilities to their depths.

Despite his brave outward demeanor during his tilt with the ferocious old man he had feared within himself. He possessed no gladiatorial spirit and did not relish fray for the sake of it. But he did have accurate notions of right and wrong, of the justice of a cause and of manliness in standing for it. He had exhibited that trait many times to the astonishment of those who had been deceived by his quiet exterior.

In this instance his employers had put a trust into his hands. He had resolved to go through with his task. But now there was added another incentive--a very distinct determination to give Gideon Ward at least one check and lesson in his career of wholesale domination.

A queer grief worked in his heart and a wistful tenderness moistened his eyes as he thought upon that injured brother, living out his wrecked life somewhere in the heart of those great woods about him. Perhaps there was a bit of prescience in the warmth with which he dwelt on the subject, for Fate had written that Joshua Ward was to play an important part in the life of Rodney Parker.

He went to sleep with the sorrow of it all weighing his mind, and his teeth gritting with determination as he reflected on Gideon Ward and his ugly threats.

CHAPTER SEVEN--HOW "THE FRESH-WATER CORSAIRS" CAME TO SUNKHAZE

In the morning Parker's foreman was waiting for him in the men's room of the tavern. It was so early that the smoky kerosine lamp was still struggling with the red glow of the dawn.

"Mr. Parker," said the foreman earnestly, "have you go it figured what the old chap is goin' to do to us?"

"That is hardly a fair question to put to me Mank," said the engineer, pulling on his mittens. "You knew him up this way better than I. Now you tell me what you expect him to do."

But the foreman shook his head dubiously.

"It'll never come at a man twice alike," he said.

"Sometimes he just snorts and folks just run. Sometimes he kicks, sometimes he bites, sometimes he rears and smashes things all to pieces.

But the idea is, you can depend on him to do something and do it quick and do it mighty hard. We've known Gideon Ward a good many years up this way and we've never seen him so mad before nor have better reason for being mad. The men are worrying. I thought it right to tell you that much."

"Well, I'm worrying, too," said Parker. He tried to speak jestingly, but the heaviness of the night's foreboding was still upon him and the foreman detected the nervousness in his voice. The man now showed his own depression plainly.

"I was in hopes I could tell the men that you could see your way all free and clear" he said.

"Then the men are worrying?"

"That they are, sir. A good many of us own houses here in Sunkhaze and there's more than one way for Colonel Gideon Ward to get back at us. Several of the boys came to me last night and wanted to quit. I understand that the postmaster has been talking to you and he must have told you some of the things that the old man done and hasn't been troubled about, either by his conscience or the law. You see what kind of a position that puts us in."

"You don't mean that the crew is going to strike, or rather slip out from under, do you, Mank?" asked Parker, struck by the man's demeanor.

"Well, I'd hardly like to say that. I ain't commissioned to put it that strong. But we've got to remember the fact that we'll probably want to live here a number of years yet, and railroad building won't last forever. Still, it's hardly about future jobs that we're thinking now.

It's what is liable to happen to us in the next few days. It will be tough times for Sunkhaze settlement if the Gideonites swoop down on us, Mr. Parker."

The engineer threw out his arms impetuously.

"But I'm in no position, Mank, to guarantee safety to the men who are working for the company," he cried. "It looks to me as tho I were standing here pretty nigh single-handed. If I understand your meaning, I can't depend on my crew to back me up if it comes to a clinch with the old bear?"

"The boys here are not cowards," replied the foreman with some spirit.

"They're good, rugged chaps with grit in 'em. Turn 'em loose in a woods clearing a hundred miles from home and I'd match 'em man for man with any crowd that Gid Ward could herd together. I don't say they wouldn't fight here in their own door yards, Mr. Parker. They'd fight before they'd see their houses pulled down or their families troubled. But as to fighting for the property of this railroad company and then taking chances with the Gideonites afterward--well, I don't know about that!

It's too near home!" Again the foreman shook his head dubiously. "As long as you can reckon safely that the old one is goin' to do something, the boys thought perhaps you'd notify the sheriff."

But Parker remembered his instructions. Reporting his predicament to the sheriff would mean sowing news of the Sunkhaze situation broadcast in the papers.

"It isn't a matter for the sheriffs," he replied shortly. "We'll consider that the men are hired to transport material and not to fight.

We can only wait and see what will happen. But, Mank, I think that when the pinch comes you will find that my men can be as loyal to me, even if I am a stranger, as Ward's men are to the infernal old tyrant who has abused them all these years. I'm going to believe so at any rate."

He turned away and started out of doors into the crisp morning. "I'm going to believe that last as long as I can," he muttered.

"It'll help to keep me from running away."

He found his crew gathered in the railroad yard near the heaps of unloaded material for construction. The men eyed him a bit curiously and rather sheepishly.

"I know how you stand, men," he said cheerily. "I don't ask you to undertake any impossibilities. I simply want help in getting this stuff across Spinnaker Lake. Let's at it!"

His tone inspired them momentarily.

They were at least dauntless toilers, even if they professed to be indifferent soldiers.

The sleds or skids were drawn up into the railroad yard by hand and loaded there. Then they were snubbed down to the lake over the steep bank. On the ice the "train" was made up.

Even Parker himself was surprised to find what a load the little locomotive could manage. He made four trips the first day and at dusk had the satisfaction of beholding many tons of rails, fish-plates and spikes unloaded and neatly piled in the yarding place at the Spinnaker end of the carry.

Between trips, while the men were unloading, he had opportunity to extend his right-of-way lines for his swampers and attend to other details of his engineering problem.

'Twas a swift pace he set!

He dared to trust no one else in the cab of the panting "Swamp Swogon"